Wordle of Sermon Aug. 31, 2008 on Matt 16:21-28

Sermon, 35 22nd Ordinary, Exodus 3:1–15; Matt 16 21-28

Terribly Called

We have the strangest faith you could imagine.  Two of our greatest heroes, Moses and Peter both have an opportunity to say yes to the call of God: both of them say “no”.

Moses is called to the greatest vocation possible: to be the leader of the Liberation of his people, the slaves of the Empire of Egypt.  The first thing he says to God, (in effect) is “not me.”  The great vocation seems like a terrible idea to him personally.

Jesus finally announces his itinerary to his inner circle led by Peter.  Remember, Peter has just proclaimed, “You are the Messiah, the son of God.“  But hearing that the path leads to suffering and death, he says, “God forbid!”  Sounds like a terrible call to follow.

Why do we have these texts?  Why, of all the vignettes of the lives of Moses and Peter did these texts get passed down? Because they are crucial.

Any time you have a story in which the central characters are confused and need to be corrected, it must be that the author is concerned that the readers are in grave danger of making the same mistakes.

Neither Moses nor Peter understood the big picture; they had to   come to a new and clearer understanding of:

• What is God like?
• What does he care about?
• What does he want from us?
• How do we answer his call to follow him?

We have these same crucial questions.
To answer the questions mistakenly is disastrous – as much to us today as to Moses and Peter.
Let us let the Author teach us.  First, Moses’ story.

What did Moses believe about God before he saw that mysterious burning bush?

Who knows? He was raised in the house of the Egyptian Pharaoh.  Did he believe in the divinity of the Pharaoh, the divine sanction on the Empire and its methods?  Who knows?

One thing is clear: at the experience of that mysterious, unquenchable burning bush, he was taught two things: Who is God, and What does God care about.

Lesson 1: God is Absolute divinity.  “I am who I am” – the essence of being itself.  “
Don’t come any closer: this is holy ground; remove  your sandals”, or as Jesus said “Hallowed, or Holy be your name.”

When we worship God, we come with reverence, knowing that we are in the presence of divinity itself.

But lesson 1 is complex: this holy God knows Moses by name: calls to him by name.  “Moses, Moses“

He identifies himself with Moses family history: “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
Lesson 1 is that this mysterious, holy God is personal, he is near, not far off.  He is aware of what is happening to his people and he is engaged in their rescue.

We cannot miss this:
What kind of God is God? He is not any kind of god; he is not an Egyptian god.  He is Israel’s God.

• He has a history with these people.
• He has a relationship with these people.
• He has committed himself to these people.

What is God like?

• He is the God who hears his people’s cries, and cares.
• He is aware of their misery, and it moves him.
• He can see the oppressing conditions that Empire has forced upon them, and he is engaged.

So what does he want?

He wants Moses to do something that seems to defy logic and common sense.  Go to Pharaoh.  Go to where your ran from for fear of loosing your life.

Moses, though in the presence of the burning fire itself, says, “Who am I?“  His mission is counter-intuitive.  How could good come from such a call?  Liberation seems not unlikely, but impossible, and life threatening.

Take note of this: God has not called Moses to comfort, to safety, to ease.  But he has called him personally, and promises this:  “I will be with you;

Who is God and what does he want?

We worship a God:

• who is holy and transcendent, and
• who is horrified by slavery, by sweat shops and child labor.
• who is in opposition to the inhumane treatment of prisoners
• and hates conditions of grinding hopeless poverty;

And a God who, therefore:

• sees where the pain is in your life
• hears your cries in the night
• and is with you, presently at every moment.

We worship a God whose love is not merely mystical and psychological, but rather is as actual as the bricks those Israelite slaves were forced to manufacture for the benefit of the Empire.

It is so significant to notice what he does about it
He calls a person to put himself at risk for people in need.

“Go to Pharaoh! … Set my people free.”

He calls Moses to deny himself, take up his staff, and follow his leading into the jaws of the Empire.
And you know the rest of the story.

But now let us fast forward to the story of Peter and Jesus.  Here we have another similar call to risk everything, deny yourself, take up  your cross, follow me.
Just like Moses, Peter cannot handle this at first: death and suffering were not part of his plan for the Messiah, the son of God – as he had just proclaimed Jesus.

“God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”
In Peter’s words, Jesus recognizes the voice of the satan expressing the same temptation he had faced in the wilderness: to take the path of glory, not of suffering.  To bend the knee to the evil tactics of Empire and make all the kingdoms of the earth bow before him.
Jesus looks at Peter, but addresses the source of that idea:
“Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Peter, at this point, pre-Easter morning, cannot fathom how suffering and death could possibly achieve God’s purposes for his people.

God’s people were in bondage to empire and needed liberation.
Jesus knew that the source of the pain of his people was deeper than empire, it was evil itself.

Every empire is built on the domination, control, subjugation of  people.
Every empire is founded on the backs of its slaves – whether they are building an Egyptian pyramids, or laboring 18 hours a day in a coal mine, or sewing up cheap T-shirts for export.

Jesus did not have the agenda of dismantling Rome.
His agenda was the demolition of the evil use of human beings as means rather than ends.

This evil, this “will-to-power” to gain advantage over others, to  pursue the endless quest to indulge ourselves, whether by direct or indirect means, is at the root of an enormous amount of human suffering.

The revolution Jesus brings will begin when redemption comes to people who will reject this evil in themselves.

The revolution will start when a groundswell of people of faith are willing to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Jesus.

This is what God wants from us:

• Every moment we invest in ministry to the poor instead of spending on ourselves, is an act of self-denial; a direct assault on evil’s claim on our lives.
• Every time we get out and visit people in hospital or people who are home-bound, every call, every card that says “I care” is a rejection of the evil of self-obsession.
• Every time we spend money filling the grocery sack for the Christian Service Center instead of banking the money for ourselves, we are saying “no” to evil and “yes” to the call to deny ourselves.
• Every time we raise our political voices against genocide, every time we participate in the One campaign, we are putting ourselves behind Jesus in the movement that can bring real, concrete liberation to people all around the globe.

The self denial that we are called to is not about guilt and shame or self-loathing.  Self denial is real, concrete and practical.  It is saying no to the concept that a persons life consists in the abundance of his possessions.

• It is about finally learning that there is actually more joy that comes from spending an hour in ministry at Holeman prison than an hour in front of HBO.
• It means you feel better about yourself for having tutored young people who would otherwise drop out than you could ever by spending that time on yourself.
• It means discovering that you feel far richer for having invested money in a clinic in Sudan than you would be if that money was spent on new clothes for yourself.

This is the irony and compelling certainty of following Jesus: that those who loose their time, loose their money, loose their lives for him and for the kingdom are the ones who actually gain their lives.

Jesus said it best:

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

The call we hear is the call to risk loosing ourselves,  our security, our lives on the wager that this is the only way we will find them.
Let us loose our lives, for His sake!

Stop the War with Russia!

War with Russia is not what we need

Russia recognizes South Ossetia; We do not; Inconsistency in foreign policy betrays the buried agendas

Flags: Kosovo & USA

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev (whose name nobody gets right: “Med -vee-Ed – yeff) just announced that he accepts the Duma’a (parliment’s) recommendation that Russia recognize both South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent republics.  Meaning: “Georgia, let your claim on them go. “

So, the rule is this: if a distinct people-group (an ethnic group in a contiguous region, such as the South Ossetians) all want independence, they should have it.  Let them go.

Good.  So that’s why Russia let Chechenya go, right?.  That’s why Russia wants independence for Kosovoovo from Serbia, right?  Or not.  Russia is hypocritical on this point.

The US stands by our new ally, Georgia, according to two policy rules:
1)  the territorial integrity of a country (like Georgia) must be respected and maintained (meaning: Russians: go a way and stop meddling);
2) Ethnically distinct (or nearly so) regions which are currently contained in a nation-state should stay there and not splinter off.

Good.  That’s why:
1) we respected the territorial integrity of Iraq and did not invade; and
2) the US does not want Chechnya or Kosovo to be independent, right?

Or not;  the USA is hypocritical on this point.

The total inconsistency of the policy-arguments of both sides shows that the real issues are beneath the surface.  After all, the United States embraced the “Monroe doctrine” which assumed the legitimacy of “spheres of influence” (we named the policy after a president) but if anyone else wants a sphere of influence, we do not accept it as legitimate.   Double standards are what we do best.  We had a Cuban missile crisis and now the Russians have a Polish missile crisis.

Whose “sphere of influence” is Iraq in?  They are a Shi’s majority contry and have a Shi’a neigbor next door: Iran, so presumably they are in the Iranian sphere of influence.  No way, right?  This policy works for the USA, but we are special; an exception.

The Kurds of Iraq want to be independent from their Arab neighbors, just as the Kosovars of Serbia do, so they should be allowed to go their own way, right?  Don’t tell Turkey or Iran that: the Kurds of Turkey and Iran – and the PKK – the armed and dangerous military arm of the  Kurds will just try harder – as the people of South Ossetia do, right?

I am being facetious here: I know that each of these locations have hugely complex issues (like mixed populations, for a start) driving the debate, and that access and control of natural resources is playing a huge part of this game, but I’m making a point: we (the USA) does not need to start another war over a policy that has no meaning.  We are getting ready to get into a conflict with Russia over policies which neither of us are truthful about.  It’s not about South Ossetia’s rights, or Georgia’s rights, or Russia’s rights, or America’s rights; it’s about domination and control – on both sides.

Georgia, because they want to have for themselves what they deny the South Ossetian’s – independence from a powerful overlord, gives us a chance to stick it in Russia’ eye (“gotcha! the people who gave us Lenin do not want to be dominated by Russia!  Take that!”).  We get the opportunity to make it harder for the Russians to get what they have always needed: a dependable Black Sea port.  So it has nothing to do with whether or not the South Ossetians should stay in Georgia – a state they want to be independent of.

America does not need a war over this.  But if events follow their current course, we could easily get into a war with Russia.

We must demand that our political leaders do what we elect them and pay them to do: keep us safe!  There is no threat to America at stake here.  Maybe pride.  I will never sacrifice my sons to a war for pride; nothing could be less ethical; it has no justification.

We must demand that they stop giving this issue global importance.  By the very same measure, Russia could start a legitimate war with us for backing the independence of Kosovo from Serbia.  This is not 1389, there is no Ottoman empire, and there is no Kurdistan.  There is a Serbia, an Iran, an Iraq, a Georgia and a Russia: let’s deal with facts.  We do not need another cold war nor another world war.  This would be completely ridiculous if it were not so dangerous.

I am not naive to the fact that many of the current residents of South Ossetia are actually Russian, not native South Ossetian (nor that there are many Serbs in Kosovo and Turkmen in Kirkuk, Iraq [Kurdistan?]).  That makes no difference in the main argument: we have no business making this a reason for our involvement in a new, huge war with Russia!

We must not allow Georgia to draw us in to a conflict of their choosing.  They want us to get engaged – why else would they suggest we off load supplies (humanitarian?) at Poti, a port where we could easily have a direct conflict with Russians who control it?  A new US armed conflict with Russia may be in their interests: it is not in ours.

Sermon, 21st Ordinary A, Isaiah 51:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20

Renaming Rocks

A new poll from the Pew Research Center has found a slim majority that says religious institutions should not speak out on political and social issues.

People have been frustrated by the way religiously-based beliefs have been involved

in our politics and legislation, and perhaps you are one of them.

Our texts today bring up this issue. Why? Because if anything is central and fundamental to our faith it is that God is revealed to us in his Son, Jesus.

If we want to know God, our task is to know him through Jesus. If we want to understand what he wants, cares about, requires of us, we look at Jesus, we listen to Jesus.

This Jesus-focus is authorized in the very text we have before us today from Matthew, and it is here that we also get a strong teaching of Jesus that involves politics and social issues.

To be clear then, to know God, to love God, to be a person of faith is to be a learner, that is, a disciple – of Jesus.

So if he is passionate about a political or social issue, we allow him to “school” us.

Looking at it another way: if Jesus cared about it, he did so because God cares about it.

Our quest is to know God, to understand what God wants of us, and to become better than we are now in following as a disciple. So, we need this text; let us begin.

First, this text is usually called Peter’s Great Confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi. It is central to our faith that Jesus is the Messiah, or Christ (in Greek-based English), both of which mean “the anointed one.”

Jesus is God’s unique son, anointed with God’s Holy Spirit. That is Peter’s confession of faith, and Jesus blesses him for it.

But then, right after Jesus congratulates Simon for getting this correct – credit for which he gives to God, not to Simon’s brilliance – there are some really strange phrases.

Jesus changes Simon’s name – to Peter (his mother named him Simon) – why? and why change it?

Peter means “rock.” What is all that “rock” language supposed to mean?

Jesus called him the son of Jonah – what’s that about?

Then Jesus Gave him the keys of the kingdom to bind and loose with authority – what does that mean: that he made him the Pope?

And are these odd phrases connected to each other or to Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah, son of God at Caesarea Philippi?

Yes! and Yes!

Let’s take them one at a time: Let’s start with the Rock business. Of course you know that Peter is the Greek word for Rock. Jesus says to simon, “You are Peter or Rock, and on this rock I will build my church.”

The Rock is a frequent Old Testament image: God is our solid rock or refuge – it is a fortress metaphor.

But Jesus cannot be calling Simon “God,” so we go to another way the rock metaphor is used, and that takes us to the reading from Isaiah 51.

The prophet tells the people not to forget their identity: they are chips off of the block of Abraham and Sarah.

Question: What was God doing with Abraham and Sarah? He was starting in motion a process that would bring, as Isaiah says, “light to the nations.”

God chose Abraham and Sarah as the first step in blessing all the nations of the earth, being a light to all the nations.

So how did that work out? Actually, not so well. In fact, instead of being the means by which God would bless the whole world, Israel turned inward, circled the wagons, and focused ferociously on keeping the rest of the world away.

Jesus, however, was all about taking the light of God beyond the ethnic confines of Israel.

Jesus was like the prophet Jonah who preached the gospel to the Assyrians in Nineveh, so that even the enemies of God’s people came to have faith.

That’s why he looked at Simon and said, “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah…”. Simon too would be a boundary crosser.

This is also why he changed his name. Simon’s mother did what a lot of other mothers did: she named her son after a national hero.

Simon was part of the Maccabean Revolt which was successful in winning independence for the Jews against the Greeks.

Lots of sons were named for the heroes of that independence struggle, including Matthew, John, and Judas as well as Simon.

So when Jesus changed Simon’s name, he transformed his identity from the next conquering hero of national independence to a son of Jonah the prophet, preacher to the gentiles.

Jesus gave him a new name: Rock – or Peter. Simon and all the Israelites were cut from the Rock of Abraham and Sarah; they were Jewish.

Abraham and Sarah were given a promise, a covenant, and a mandate to be blessings to the entire world, to be a light to all peoples, not just to their own ethnic clan.

Jesus was intent on fulfilling this God-given mandate to bring God’s love and God’s redemption to the world.

To this end, he laid a foundation that was no longer based on ethnicity.

This new foundation, this new Rock is the church. Jesus said to Simon: you are now Peter, Rock, and I will build my church on the ministry I began when I called you to follow me.

The gospel of Matthew specifies that this happened, not in Jerusalem on the huge rock outcropping called Mount Zion, but on another city built on a rock, Caesarea-Philippi – a Roman city.

Now the pieces are coming together. Jesus is the Messiah – yes; but does not base his kingdom on a new Simon, a new ethnic liberator. He is God’s Messiah, or Christ, who is accomplishing a much greater, world-wide liberation; soul liberation.

If this is going to work, changes will be necessary. The old walls of Kosher will have to come down. People will have to be released, loosened from the old purity regulations that excluded so many – including all gentiles from worship.

So Jesus gave Peter the authority, or the keys, to bind or loose – Rabbinic language for forbid or allow.

Peter could say, “OK, now you can eat pork. Now you can eat meals with gentiles, now you can, as Peter did, stay with a professional tanner (formerly taboo – see Acts 9) and preach to a Roman centurion, like Cornelius, who as it happen, lived in Caesarea. (Acts 10)

So now we can see how this all fits together.

Jesus asks: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14 And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
But Jesus gets personal: Who do you say that I am?

Peter, the first person Jesus called to be his disciple has the answer: you are more than those things. You are the long- awaited fulfillment of our hopes: you are Messiah, God’s Son.

Here is where it gets crucial: to know God is to know God as revealed in Jesus.

To know what God wants of us is to learn from Jesus.

Central to Jesus’ teaching, and therefore, central to God’s concern is that race and ethnicity are not meaningful categories for the purposes of exclusion in the Kingdom of God.

To go even further: the Messiah will not be the champion of any political agenda:

• He will not be co-opted by any group. He is not a Jewish zealot.
• He is not a mascot for Republicans, he is not a mascot for Democrats,
• he is not a partisan of the Georgians nor Russians.
• or Kurds or Iraqi’s

In fact, the opposite.

• Any group that is trying to oppress another is against him.
• Any group that wants to exclude another is working against his purposes and contrary to his will.

So, what does God want from us?

• What does it mean to be a disciple?
• What does it mean to bend the knee to Jesus the Christ, the Son of God?

- It means working for the reconciliation of the world that he made.

- It means being an advocate for peace making, for negotiation that leads to justice and fairness, and the protection of the rights of minorities.

So does this touch politics? Yes. We can make it clear to the people we send into office that their job is to work for justice and peace.

All over the world people are killing each other over racial and ethnic conflict. That is the opposite of God’s will.

As people who bend the knee to Jesus as Messiah, Christ, Son of God:

• we go to work on the side of reconciliation and peace-making;
• we pray for reconciliation peace-making;
• we vote for policies of reconciliation and peace-making;
• and we demonstrate in our own personal dealings with people who are different from us an openness and respect that shows that we know that Jesus Christ is our Lord.

Yes, it is bad in many places in the world today. But we are not people who are in despair. We are people of hope because imbedded in this text is a promise.

When Jesus looked at Simon, and called him Rock, he made this declaration: “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

Jesus is not attempting in vain, he is building his church. We are evidence of it. “I will build” is the basis we have to be hopeful people.

This is not naiveté nor wishful thinking. It is the promise of our Lord that he is at work in this world, and he has called us to join him in this work!

Word Cloud of Sermon for Aug 24, 2008 on Matt 16:13-20

click to enlarge

Simon, Peter, Hanukkah, Revolution and Jesus: Matthew 16:17-18

Menorah

Matthew 16:17-18

17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,

Jesus re-named his lead disciple from Simon to Peter.  The fact that Simon’s parents gave him that name is huge.  The fact that Jesus changed it is even more huge.  Simon was named for a great hero.  The story goes like this: (the Wikipedia pages on this period are on the  money and I’m using some quotes below)

Every year Jewish people celebrate Hanukkah in commemoration of  Jewish independence from the  Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty from 164 BCE to 63 BCE.

Here is how it happened: a Jewish priest named Mattathias, or Matthew, when asked by a Seleucid Greek government representative under King Antiochus IV to offer sacrifice to the Greek gods, not only refused to do so, but killed the Jew who had stepped forward to do so. He then attacked the government official that required the act.

Upon the edict for his arrest, Mattathias (Matthew) took refuge in the wilderness of Judea with his five sons, (including Judah, Simon, and Jonathan) and called upon all Jews to follow him; many did, and they were eventually successful at gaining national independence for nearly 100 years.  Note the names of 3 of his sons: they come up in the Gospels as Judas, Simon and John.

Matthew (Mattathaias)’s son Simon was the one in leadership when the Jews finally won their independence.  It was Simon who had the honor of riding into liberated Jerusalem. Simon assumed the leadership (142 BCE), receiving the double office of High Priest and prince of Israel, the founder of he Hasmonean dynasty.  This is the Simon that Jesus’ disciple was named for.

Apparently, giving your sons the names of your national heros of independence was not uncommon.  Two out of Jesus’ 4 brothers were named for national heroes: Simon and Judas (Matt 13:54-55).  Jesus himself was actually named Joshua in Hebrew, after the successor to Moses who led the Israelites to conquer the land of Canaan.

Independence ended 63 years before Jesus was born.  I think it would be safe to say that everyone who was Jewish in Jesus time wished desperately to regain that independence again, this time, from the Romans.  That quest was, after all, exactly the agenda of the Zealot movement.  They wished for it badly enough to name their sons for the heroes of their most recent independence movement.

The quintessential icon of Judaism for most of us is the Menorah which comes from the “Festival of Lights” or Hanukkah, which celebrates Jewish Independence.

All that to say this: Jesus changed the name of Simon, the great hero of Jewish national independence, to Peter, rock, something to build on.  This was not accidental nor trivial.  Everyone in Jesus’ circle of companions would have understood the significance of that change immediately.

Peter confesses Jesus as “Messiah” – a loaded title full of expectations about national liberation (see N.T. Wright on this:  Jesus and the Victory of God, especially p. 481, ff. and 528, ff).

Certainly this name-change was a dramatic act of re-defining what it meant that he was Messiah, Christ.  Jesus was not going to champion the movement for national independence.  For Jesus, the hopes and dreams of Israel were going to come true, but the kingdom was not a new Jewish state.

Wright puts it this way:
“Jesus’ redefined notion of Messiahship thus corresponded to his whole kingdom-praxis….  It offered itself as the central answer to other key kingdom-questions.  And it pointed on to a fulfillment of Israel’s destiny which no one had imagined or suspected.  He came, as the representative of the people of YHWH, to bring about an end of exile, the renewal of the covenant, the forgiveness of sins.  To accomplish this, an obvious first-century option for a would-be Messiah would run: go to Jerusalem, fight the battle against the forces of evil, and get yourself enthrouned as the rightful king.  Jess, in facte, adopted precisely this strategy.  But, as he hinted to James and John, he had in mind a different battle, a different throne.”  p. 539

Word Cloud: Sermon Aug. 17, 2008, Matt 15:20-28

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On Being a Canaanite Dog – Aug. 17, 2008

Isa. 56:1-8

locked out

Matt. 15:10-28

On Being a Canaanite Dog

I was driving my car in the city where we lived in Croatia.  I had some Croatian colleagues with me.  We were approaching the center, traffic was heavy.  The car in front of me was holding things up.  His car had a Hungarian licensee plate.  I said, “dumb foreigner”.

My passengers exploded with laughter: here was I, an American, calling a Hungarian in Croatia a foreigner!

I got that joke from Jesus.  Today we watch him as he leaves Judea, crosses the border into Syria (modern Lebanon) – the region of Tyre and Sidon – and calls a local lady a dog!

This is an inside-out story.  She wants healing for her daughter, but Jesus  has left Israel to go to her land to tell her that he was sent only to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Well then, what is he doing there?

The way Matthew tells this story, we see that she is not just literally beyond the border of God’s people, everything about this woman is wrong;

• she is a woman,
• she is a gentile, which means
• she doesn’t keep Sabbath
• she eats unclean food
• she of course never offers sacrifices,
• and she is in constant contact with evil powers

- her daughter is demon possessed.

What does God think about this kind of person?  She should be in the bull’s eye of the judgment and wrath target.

But she needs help for her daughter – of a specific kind.

• The girl is not sick,
• She is not a leper,
• She is not lame or blind,
• She is not hungry,

Her problem is spiritual.  She has a demon tormenting her.

Watch this story closely: we will see that this demon is quite familiar and is still alive and well, tormenting people today.

So the nameless mother cries out to Jesus for help.

Her words are carefully chosen and deeply ironic:
“Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David.”

It is hard to have a request with three components that is more Jewish than this!

The gentile woman asks for mercy, using the word in her language that translates the word that sums up God’s lovingkindness (chesed).

She calls Jesus Lord which is a theologically loaded word.

And to top it off, calls him “Son of David“

Matthew started his gospel with a genealogical review, precisely to prove that Jesus was the long awaited son of David.

The Scribes and the Pharisees who make such a point of being acceptable to God do not call Jesus, “son of David.”  But this ultimate outsider does.

Next in the story, a bit of humor: the disciples tell Jesus to send her away.  The disciples are the ones who are away from home.  She is at home.  How could Jesus send her away?

But anyway, he doesn’t try.  He actually engages her in conversation – step one in showing a person dignity and respect.

He tells her he has been sent to lost sheep, but not to her kind of lost sheep.  He has been sent, he tells her, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (then what is he doing there on her side of the boundary?).

But she keeps coming, and kneels humbly and reverently before him, shortening her request to “Lord, help me.”

What happens next sounds horrible.  Jesus says,
“It is not fair to take the childrens’ food and throw it to the dogs.”

Well, if she is a dog, I am a dog, you are dogs, all of us are dogs.  If being a Canaanite, a non-Jewish person, places her outside the boundary of God’s covenant with Abraham, then we are in as much trouble as she.

But what sound like insult is another twisting irony: if she were an irrelevant dog, he would have ignored her, not engaged her.

The fact that he offers this brief metaphor of a table with children eating around it and dogs beneath is offering her a challenge to respond to.

She does.  She takes the image and runs with it.  If I’m a dog, then give me what the dogs get; the crumbs.  Let the kids get the meal – fair enough.  All I need is a crumb of mercy falling from the master’s table.

Crumb – let’s see; I’m picturing something about the size of a mustard seed.  What use is mercy the size of a mustard seed?

Question: Up to this point, what has this Sabbath breaking, pork eating, non-chosen-people, impure woman done?  Asked where she can convert?  Promise to turn a new leaf?  Even memorize the 10 commandments?

Up to this point all she has done is ask for a crumb of
mercy.

And with only that to go on, Jesus answers her with the opposite words he said to sinking Peter: “Great is your faith.”

Last week we made the declaration that we are people of weak faith, like Peter.

We are people who, like him, loose our focus, notice the storm, feel helpless and overwhelmed, and doubt God.

But we saw Jesus reaching down to save sinking Peter, as he does us, despite the weakness of our faith.

Now we see the measure of great faith: it is faith enough to ask for a crumb of mercy – to ask with head bowed and hands open, waiting for the crumb to land.

That’s it.  And that is a revolution.  God’s mercy is not contingent on anything but asking for it.  (Calvin would say that having the desire to ask for it is itself a mercy).

But the point is worthiness.
Jesus said, “Let it be done for you as you wish.”

• Not because she was Jewish
• not because she kept the commandments
• not because she promised to improve,

Jesus considered her worthy of God’s mercy just because she asked for it.

She was, after all, not outside of the boundary of God’s grace.

There are two powerful lessons here and we need both of them.

The first is personal: we are never outside the boundaries of God’s mercy.  God is not waiting for us to improve, not waiting for our promises to do better, not waiting for us to become giants of faith.  God does not wait to be merciful.

The very notion that we could be excluded from God’s mercy is demonic – still.

Everybody has skeletons in the closet; things we wish we had not done or said or wished.  We all have reasons to think that God is not exactly pleased with us.

But the message of this scripture is that it’s not about being worthy by any measure.

God gets to decide to be merciful and gracious to us and there is nothing we can do to stop him.

If we would just look around, everyday we would be overwhelmed with evidence that he is not waiting.  Every day he gives us life it is his gift.

Every day that we can get up and get dressed is a  mercy.

Every day that we can see the sky in motion is a mercy.

And every time we:

• swallow a pill,
• have a nurse take our temperature
• and speak with a real doctor,

- we are getting huge quantities of mercy that many people do not have.

God is in the mercy business, and he is a success at it.

Lesson number two is that we are not the only ones inside the circle of God’s mercy.  In fact, there is no one who is outside of it.
The idea that any criteria could separate a person from God’s mercy is also demonic – still.

By the act of crossing that boundary into the region of Tyre and Sidon, Jesus was demolishing artificial, human-created boundaries around “insiders” and “outsiders”.

We like to think that we are unlike the Scribes and Pharisees in their smug superiority to Canaanite women, but, honestly, we do it all the time.

We feel like we are God’s exceptions because:

• we are not illegal aliens
  we are not Muslims
  we are not criminals,
  we don’t have HIV/AIDS
  we aren’t on welfare and on drugs
  we don’t drive ratty cars and wear scary clothes

But this text calls us to cross boundaries.

Jesus calls us:

• to engage excluded people in dialogue,
  to bring dignity to people who have been shut out of the conversation,
  to be on the side of people who do not have:
  adequate health care
  decent housing
  who are discriminated against because of their sexual identity
  or medical condition
  to bring God’s healing mercy to people who need it

Because they need it, not because they have earned it,

- just exactly the same reason we received it.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit

Georgia, South Ossetia, ethnic conflict and Jesus

According to Wikipedia,

South Ossetians nearly unanimously approved a referendum on November 12, 2006 opting for independence from Georgia. The referendum was hugely popular, winning between 98 and 99 percent of the ballots, flag waving and celebration marked were seen across South Ossetia, but elsewhere observers were less enthusiastic. International critics claimed that the move could worsen regional tensions, and the Tblisi government thoroughly discounted the results.

Neither the government of the United States nor the EU accept that 2006 vote as legitimate.  Nonetheless, the region of South Ossetia is called a “break away” region because a substantial number of its inhabitants want to be free of Georgian state control.

People (we) want to govern themselves.  We do not want “them” to rule “us.”  It’s true for Coats and Serbs, it’s true for Hutu and Tootsie, it’s true for Kurds, Kosovars – everybody.

So the most important question is who is “them”?  This is solved by defining “us.”

All over the world “us” is defined by ethnicity.  Ethnic Ossetians want to govern themselves, and they do not want to be governed by ethnic Georgians – or Russians or Ottomans or anybody else.  They want what everybody wants.

Sometimes ethnicity is too blunt, and so the division needs to be cut by a finer blade: religion is often at hand to be the instrument.  Sunni and Shi’a are both Arabs, but “need” to distinguish themselves, so religion – down to the level of sect-of-the-same-religion helps.  It helped Serbs (Orthodox Christians) and Croats (Roman Catholic Christians) where ethnic differences between Serbs and Croats are not visible to the naked eye.

Ossetians know who they are; they have defined “us”.  They have their own language, their own alphabet, and a long history of fighting for independence.

Ethnic boundaries are frequently in conflict with national boundaries; ask the Hungarians who, after Trianon in 1919 found themselves in Romania.  Ask the Serbs, Croats, Solvenes (and more Hungarians)  and others who were collectively tied together in Yugoslavia.

But the modern nation state of Georgia, now free of the Soviet Union, wants the territory of the South Ossetians (currently inside the borders of Georgia) to  be and stay part of Georgia.  Regardless of the reasons (oil piplines for example) the conflict is about who gets to call it their own.

The Georgians look at South Ossetia and see that almost a third (28%) of it’s population is actually ethnically Georgian.  Some say the number is as high as 35% – but it is complicated.  The Russians, over the course of decades, moved a number of Russians into the region – and many now identify as Ossetians; should they be counted?

Anyway,  the population is now mixed.  It’s mixed down to the village level – just like Bosnia where a Serb village is just over the hill from a Bosnian-Muslim village (like Srebrenica – hence, the target of “ethnic cleansing”).

So what everybody wants  – to rule “themselves” becomes impossible in practice – unless we go back to city states (village states?) like ancient Greece.  Too many eggs have been scrambled, too many populations have been shoved around over time; the cry of nationalists (foreigners go home) is an impossible wish (home?).

So what about Jesus on this issue?

Ethnicity and boundary markers like religion were a huge part of Jesus’ agenda.  He wanted the “us” definition for the “people of God” to no longer include ethnicity.  He intentionally journeyed into non-Jewish territory, engaged ethnically non-Jews, and commended them for their faith.   That’s what is going on in the setting of the text this week in Matthew 15.  Jesus, in the region of Tyre and Sidon, engages a local woman, specifically identified by her non-Jewish ethnicity, a “Canaanite” in repartee, allows himself to be bested by her, and grants her wish to have her daughter healed.

Jesus’ location and action were “in your face” to people with the purity-agenda (which of course included ethnic purity).  Collectively represented as the “Scribes and Pharisees” these spokespersons for the “tradition of the elders” (Matt 15:2) are the subject of Jesus’ de-construction.  N.T. Wright is particularly good on this issue (Jesus and the Victory of God, pp. 195-197, 309 & ff).  Though Jesus understood the unique place of Israel in God’s plan to bless all the nations of the earth (chronologically first), he anticipated the spread of the ethnically-open-ended Kingdom of God (or Heaven) to the world.  The Canaanite lady was one of the first, though not the only nor the last non-Jew to experience the blessings of the coming kingdom.

So what do we do with this vis a vis South Ossetia and Georgia?  Well, for me, it starts like every moral question: with the ideal end.  Just as all moral standards represent an ideal of perfection (do not kill, do not steal) which are often broken in practice, nevertheless, the ideal is the goal; the vision.

So for me, the vision is of a world in which people may know themselves as “us” defined by some handy criteria (ethnicity), but do not use that criteria in a way that excludes or dominates others.  That’s the vision.

Therefore, the first project is always peaceful settlement, not automatic acceptance of either separatist movements (the South Ossetian’s agenda) nor of naton-state control-claims (Georgia’s agenda).  Rather, the first project should be to find a way in which the legitimate interests of the South Ossetians can be protected without the need for ethnic-based conflict and the enormous loss of life and population-dislocation that always follows, and the genocide that often does as well.  That’s how I read Jesus.

Notes on This week’s Lectionary text – in progress

Ordinary 20 A, Matthew 15:10–20, 21–28

“You Dog!”  – Jesus (in effect) to the Canaanite woman who just wanted her poor daughter healed of her deamons.  This is going to be an interesting week.

If there is one theme that has dominated our poor human specie it is the problem of ethnicity  – in its function as a group boundary marker.  Us and Them has been defined by family, tribe, clan, kinship group since we were primates in the jungle.  We as a specie have demonstrated that there is no action we will not justify and carry out against people we define as “other” – and today the primary way we identify is ethnically.

You may not, if you are North American, Australian, New Zealander, and a very few other places, becuase of your (my) unusually blended nation – but we are in the tiny minority of human beings.  We do the same kind of thing anyway, only our boundary markers are race, rather than ethnicity – but it’s the same thing in the end.  It is a perceived competition for scarce resources and group identity defining the combatants.  There are no new ideas.

So, does Jesus get sucked into this same trap?  What’s going on here?  I’ll be thinking about this passage this week.  Join me.